When building your test lab as part of a RWD site test plan, it is important to strategically define the right mobile devices and desktop browsers which will be your target for your manual and automated testing.
For mobile device testing you can leverage your own analytics together with market data to complement your coverage and be future ready, or leverage reports such the Digital Test Coverage Index Report.
For web testing you should also look into your web traffic analytics or based on your target markets understand which are the top desktop browsers and OS versions on which you should test against – alternatively, you can also use the digital test coverage index report referenced above.
Related Post: Set Your Digital Test Lab with Mobile and Web Calendars
Coverage is a cross organizational priority where both business, IT, Dev and QA ought to be consistently aligned. You can see a recommended web lab configuration for Q1 2016 below which is taken from the above mentioned Index – Note the inclusion of Beta browser versions in the recommended mix due to the nature silent updates of these versions deployment on end-user browsers.
For ongoing RWD projects – once defining the mobile and web test coverage using the above guidelines, the next steps are of course to try and achieve parallel side by side testing for high efficiency, as well as keep the lab up to date by revising the coverage once a quarter and assure that both the analytics as well as the market trends still matches your existing configuration.
As a best practice and recommendation, please review the below mobile device coverage model which is built out of the 3 layers of Essential, Enhanced and Extended where each of these layers includes a mix of device types such as legacy, new, market leaders and reference devices (like Nexus devices).
To learn more, check out our new Responsive Web Testing Guide.
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